Nicomedia, the ancient capital of Diocletian, surrendered to the
Turks. In a battle at Maldepe the Greek Emperor Andronicus III
suffered a defeat that led to the loss of all the Asiatic possessions
of the Greeks. Nicæa, the second city of the empire, was obliged to
yield to the conqueror, who gave the inhabitants the same terms as
those accorded to the people of Broussa. The moral effect of this
blow was immense, because Nicæa had been the starting point for the
revival of Greek civilization and political rule after the taking of
Constantinople by the Latins. It was also sacred as the seat of two
great ecumenical councils. Now, the church where the Nicene Creed was
proclaimed, became a mosque, and the city, with its name transformed
into the Turkish disguise of Isnik, lost its historical identity.
(1330.)
After the seizure of some small seaports on the Black Sea and the
Propontis, the whole of Bithynia fell into Turkish hands. There were
only the narrow straits between the Osmanlis and Europe; on the Asiatic
side the only places which still belonged to the Greek Empire were
Scutari and Philadelphia. As Ourkhan’s dominions expanded, he followed
his father’s precedent in dividing the land into sandjaks (banners).
Nicæa was intrusted, on account of its importance, to the eldest son,
Souliman, who then, on his own account, resolved to attempt the passage
into Europe. In his adventure he was accompanied only by a handful of
companions; two rafts were constructed of the trunks of trees joined by
thongs of leather, and with these a landing was made at Tzympe, which
was seized without trouble, as the fortifications of the place had
fallen into ruins (1356).
Not long after this event an earthquake shook the walls of Gallipoli
and other neighboring towns, a misfortune which made them all an easy
prey for Souliman’s officers. When the Greek Emperor protested, Ourkhan
answered that his latest conquests were due, not to his arms, but to
the will of God that had been revealed in the earthquake. Gallipoli
was the key to Europe, and it was not given up. Using it as a base,
the Osmanlis commenced to make marauding expeditions into the adjacent
country.
II MURAD I
There followed in succession to Ourkhan, not Souliman, who died in one
of the raids into Thrace, but Murad I, whose mother was a Greek. In
some respects he was a greater leader than his father, Ourkhan; he is
spoken of in the chronicles as eloquent, devoted to justice, and a
strict disciplinarian. At the same time he was beloved by his troops
because of his generosity. Although he had no education, not even the
ability to read and write, he was known as a great builder of mosques,
schools, and hospitals. When he had a document to sign he dipped
four fingers in the ink, and, keeping them as far apart as possible,
impressed them on the paper; the impression so made was worked up
artistically into the imperial Osmanli seal. His success in warfare
was due not only to his own valor, but also to the number of able
commanders who conducted his campaigns under his directions.
The European successes of his elder brother could not be followed up
immediately, because the notable victories of the Osmanlis had excited
the jealousy of the remaining Seldjouk emirs in Asia. Ourkhan had
himself warred with the Prince of Karasi and so been able to add Mysia
with Pergamum to his territories. Now Murad’s reign was opened by a
contest with the emir of Karamania, another Ala-ed-Din, who stirred
up many of the Osmanli dependencies to revolt. The city of Angora was
the center of this insurrection. Murad overcame the rebels, placed a
garrison in Angora, and adopted a policy of gradual absorption in order
to keep the Seldjouk emirates from forming a coalition against him.
One was ceded outright and a large part of another became the marriage
portion of the wife of Bajesid, son of Murad. The situation in Asia,
owing to the restlessness of the remaining emirs, who represented
another branch of the Turkish stock, continued to be a source of
difficulty for many years, and the final and complete conquest of the
whole of Anatolia only took place when the European Empire of the
Osmanlis was an accomplished fact.
The armies of Murad had now occupied Thrace; hence they were brought
into immediate contact with the two strong Slavic nations on the Balkan
peninsula, the Bulgarians and the Servians. These South Slavic peoples,
after centuries of struggle for supremacy with the Eastern Empire, had
been overpowered by the superior wealth, strategy, and civilization of
the rulers of Constantinople in the beginning of the eleventh century.
But the Latin conquest of Constantinople made it easy for them to
regain the ground they had lost. In the course of the struggle between
the Byzantines and the Crusaders, the movements towards independence
among the Servians and Bulgarians were facilitated. After the year 1261
accessions of territory were made by both branches of the Slavic race.
Besides contesting possession of Balkan territory with the Magyars they
warred among themselves for the acquisition of lands in the Maritza
basin and along the rivers Strouma and Vardar.
In this rivalry the Servians secured the greatest prizes in the way
of territorial expansion. By the end of the thirteenth century they
had reached the sea coast, and had occupied the region around the two
lakes Ochrida and Prespa. About the same time the movement to expand
their frontiers at the expense of the Greek Empire again became marked.
Northern Albania was conquered and additional lands were seized in
Macedonia. These successes led to a coalition between the Bulgars and
the Greeks; but this scheme to block the Servians failed. There was a
great battle at Velbouje, at which the Bulgarian army was completely
crushed. The plan of the Servians was to secure the alliance of their
rivals by a marriage between their leader, Stephen Douchan, and the
sister of Tsar Michael, the head of the Bulgars.
Douchan is often called the Charlemagne of Servia, but the title is
only true if measured by an unrealized dream. His reign marks the
limit of Servian ambition; he looked forward to an imperial position
under which the Slavs would become the heirs of the dignities and
domains of the Byzantine Empire, a position they deserved because of
the inability of the Greeks to defend their lands from the advancing
power of the Turk. For a time the dream seemed on the point of
realization, as Douchan’s various campaigns against the Greeks were
successful. The alliance with the Bulgars was maintained unbroken, and
only a very small part of the European possessions of the Emperors at
Constantinople remained intact. Thrace and a strip of Asia Minor was
all that was left; there was every reason to urge Douchan to proclaim
his overlordship in the regular way. Accordingly, on April 16, 1346,
Douchan was solemnly anointed Emperor (Tsar) of Servia and Roumania by
the Servian Patriarch Joannikos, at Uskup.
The next step was the conquest of the imperial city on the Bosphorus.
This could not be effected without a fleet; neither Thessalonika nor
Constantinople could be taken as long as their ports were open. Douchan
turned to the Venetians for help, but they refused to encourage the
formation of a new great power on the Mediterranean. Besides, the
Turks now barred the way, for Gallipoli had been garrisoned. The
Osmanlis, therefore, held the key to the Dardanelles. Undeterred,
however, by these changes, Douchan girded himself for a final attack
on Constantinople, when death overtook him suddenly on the 20th of
December, 1355.
His successor, Ourach, was only nineteen years old, a young man of mild
character, with none of the stern qualities needed to carry out the
warlike plans of his father. His vassal lords had not lived long enough
under a centralized system to understand its advantages even under
a weak ruler. Without the strong personality of Douchan, the empire
and the titular dignity of Tsar were only shadows. Less fortunate
than the tribe of Osman, where the line from father to son maintained
in unbroken succession under strong personal rule the clear-sighted
aims of the founder, the Servians could not resist the forces of
disintegration. Their country was mountainous, and hence the people
were kept apart in small, isolated communities. There was no longer a
vigorous leader to resist the centrifugal tendencies imposed by petty
ambitions and jealousies; and only for ten years after Douchan’s death
did the external form of his empire last. As a barrier against the
Turkish conquerors in Europe the Servians proved utterly ineffective.
With the Slavs eliminated the brunt of resistance naturally fell
upon the Greeks; but they were now only an emaciated remnant of
a great and long enduring empire that had worn out the Arab and
Saracen and had held the Slav at bay. After the fall of the Latin
rule at Constantinople (1261), the city became the capital of the
reconstructed Eastern Empire; but the scale of this restoration was
much reduced from its original grandeur. There were four groups of
imperial territories: the Asiatic possessions that had been controlled
from Nicæa, economically important as trade centers, but not great in
extent; in Europe, the capital and Thrace; some towns to the North,
such as Adrianople, a part of Macedonia, the peninsula of Gallipoli,
Chalcidice, and a part of Thessaly; certain islands in the Ægean,
Rhodes, Lesbos, Samothrace, Imbros, and the Peloponnesus in Greece.
These possessions, the feeble remnants of the realm once ruled by Basil
the Macedonian, were surrounded by lands inhabited by numerous races.
There were the Frankish lands in Greece, the Venetians in the Ægean,
an independent Greek sovereignty in Epirus, Catalans in Thessaly,
Genoese in the Black and Ægean Seas, and the parts immediately adjacent
to Constantinople itself; the Seldjouk sultans at Iconium, and the
autonomous empire of Trebizond. There were also the Slavic peoples
in the Balkan peninsula, not to mention the more distant Christian
kingdoms of Armenia and Georgia.
As a military power the revived Greek Empire was pathetically feeble.
Its last great leader in war was Michael VIII, who had retaken
Constantinople from the Latins, a conquest on a slight scale, since
the Latins were even weaker than their opponents. The measure of Greek
offensive is attested by the inability of any Greek Emperor to retake
the Asiatic provinces from the Turk, to annex the Empire of Trebizond,
to resist the Slavs in the Balkans, or to reoccupy the islands of the
Ægean and drive the Franks from Greece. Even in the interior there was
no effective administration. In every Greek city there were colonies of
Italian merchants, either Genoese or Venetian, who formed independent
communities under their own podestà. The army was filled with foreign
contingents, who were not even mercenary troops, because the Empire
could not afford to hire soldiers. They were auxiliary forces,
organized as complete military units under their own natural chief, and
were a constant menace. When they saw fit, they pillaged the country
and sometimes fought among themselves. They were under no kind of
control from the central or local authorities; within their own camps
on the frontiers, in the provinces, even under the walls of the capital
itself, they obeyed their own commanders and not the Emperor.
One of the most radical changes for the worse in the revived Greek
Empire, a change that marked the contrast with the heroic period of
Byzantine military enterprise, was the lack of a fleet. For his naval
operations the Emperor depended on the Venetians or Genoese, a most
unsatisfactory arrangement, for, owing to the jealousy of these two
commercial states, if one were the ally of Constantinople, the other
was certain to be on the opposite side. In 1296 the Venetians, after
defeating their rivals at sea, laid siege to the Pera and Galata
sections of Constantinople, the seat of the Genoese colony, and in
setting fire to the quarter destroyed many Greek houses. Later on, the
Genoese revenged themselves by massacring the Venetian residents of
Constantinople.
The anarchy was increased when, owing to rival claimants to the throne,
open civil war broke out, as it did frequently in the course of the
fourteenth century. Cantacuzene, an official in the imperial palace,
who became rival Emperor, while Anna of Saxony was regent during the
minority of her son, John V, after the death of his father, Andronicus
III, allied himself with the Servians and with the Seldjouk emir of
Konia. Anna tried to strengthen her side by calling upon Ourkhan, the
Osmanli Sultan. In the war that followed the Turks were authorized
to seize the citizens of the empire, and the rival governments placed
at the disposition of their Mohammedan allies seaports and vessels.
The captives taken were sent to Asia and sold as slaves in the Turkish
emirates.
The various enemies of the Empire used this time of civil strife as
a favorable opportunity for seizing its territory. Stephen Douchan
conquered and annexed most of Macedonia, and, as their part of
the spoil, the Genoese acquired Chios and commenced a blockade of
Constantinople, the defense of which was intrusted to other Italians
under the command of Facciolati. This leader deserted the cause of the
regent Anna, and admitted Cantacuzene into the capital. An arrangement
was now patched up by which Cantacuzene was to be Emperor until John V
reached the age of twenty-five years.
Even now Cantacuzene’s troubles as ruler were not over; his plan to
form an independent navy recruited from his own subjects and his desire
to do away with the commercial monopoly of the Genoese led to a war
of five years, 1348-1352. Cantacuzene’s Venetian allies were defeated
under the walls of Constantinople, with the result that the Greek
Emperor was obliged to make peace under most disadvantageous terms.
Not long after this disaster civil war broke out again. Souliman,
Ourkhan’s son, was a subsidized ally of Cantacuzene, and thousands of
the inhabitants of the Empire were deported by the Turks to be sold as
slaves.
The lessons of these wars were not lost upon the Turkish auxiliaries
who were allowed to play such a conspicuous and decisive rôle by both
sides; they became acquainted with the country in which they had
served, knew its roads, cities, and inhabitants. All this information
was put to good use by them when they crossed the Bosphorus to fight
for their own interests and to dispossess their former employers at
Constantinople.
From the point of view of its economic status the Empire was in no
condition to withstand an invasion. As territory was lost the proceeds
of direct taxation fell off; increases in the customs duties were
opposed and blocked by the Genoese and Venetians; the government lived
from hand to mouth. In 1306 when the Catalan mercenaries had to be
paid, Andronicus II put an end to the wheat monopoly exercised by the
Italians. Another characteristic expedient of this weak government
was the debasement of the coinage. But all the ordinary schemes for
raising money must have failed by the middle of the century, for we
find Anna of Saxony using the treasures of churches to pay for the
war against Cantacuzene. Indeed, her court had reached a condition
of extreme penury in 1347, when, at a coronation it was found that
the imperial jewels had disappeared. The splendid buildings of the
city were fast going to pieces. In Santa Sophia there were large
cracks, which necessitated the erection of two of the existing great
supporting buttresses that have enabled it to survive to our time
the frequent earthquakes that disturb the city. In the absence of a
centralized government the local administration lost all resemblance
to the admirably constructed system of the earlier period of Byzantine
rule when, as contrasted with Western Europe, it still preserved the
efficiency and smoothness of Roman governmental traditions. The local
authorities lived on the country, uncontrolled from Constantinople,
except irregularly and ineffectively.
In reality, under the name of empire, all varieties of local
organizations existed side by side; some places were ruled by petty
tyrants, while others were municipal republics. In the important port
of Thessalonika, Italian precedents were closely followed. Here there
were four classes of citizens, the notables, the clergy, the bourgeois,
and in the lowest class the “populari.” Each class enjoyed complete
autonomy. They were organized in trade corporations, had their own
system of justice, and finally got supreme control of the town, turning
it into a democracy under the presidency of their metropolitan. When
Cantacuzene undertook to bring the rebels to reason, the archbishop,
in pleading the cause of the city-state, declared that his republic
was based on equality and justice, and said that its laws were better
than those of the Republic of Plato.
There was another factor in this state of anarchy, to wit, the
religious dissensions, due to the willingness of some of the clergy
to accept union with the Papacy and to introduce Latin customs, an
attitude dating from the time of the Latin Empire. Apart from these
questions of ecclesiastical policy, there was much discussion of
theological subtilties concerning the existence of a supernatural
illumination in the soul, a controversy which divided the Church and
the imperial court. This trouble was settled by a synod, which decreed
that those espousing the new doctrine should be imprisoned.
In a land so situated and so far fallen from its earlier estate, the
rapid conquests of the Osmanlis appear as due not so much to the valor
and intelligence of the adherents of Islam as to the inability of the
Christians to act or work together. The one security of the Empire was
the comparative weakness of the Turkish sea power. The Ottoman ships
were good enough for piratical expeditions, but there was no Turkish
fleet at all able to cope with the navies of Genoa or Venice.
At the very beginning of Murad’s accession, a consistent plan of
attack was inaugurated, designed to cut off Constantinople from its
“hinterland”; the objective being the trade road between the capital
and Adrianople. Several of the important points on this line were
taken, Murad making his residence temporarily near Demotika. According
to Turkish custom, each spring brought a new expedition and a further
enlargement of the existing boundaries. The siege of Adrianople itself
soon began. (1360.) The Greek chronicles speak of its fall being due to
a betrayal of a secret path used by peasants inside the walls to get
to their fields. But the Turkish annals tell of an engagement between
the garrison and the Osmanli soldiers. In the city Murad took up his
residence, being attracted to it by its importance as a trading place
frequented by Venetians, Genoese, Florentines, and Catalans, as well
as by Turks and Greeks.
Following soon the course of the river Maritza, on which Adrianople
stands, the Turkish invaders moved farther into the land until they
came to Philippopolis, which had been taken by the Bulgars not long
before. But the Slavs showed no greater capacity than the Greeks for
united action, and the town was taken from them without difficulty.
Other places were added, including Berrhœa on the Hæmus, and this whole
section of country for some time made up the northermost borders of
Ottoman dominion in Europe.
In the south the same kind of successes took place; again a trade route
was selected, this time the road to Thessalonika, and a considerable
stretch of the territory through which it passed was annexed. In one
place the sea coast was reached at a point opposite the Island of
Samothrace. Murad returned now to Broussa, interrupting a farther
advance towards Trnova and Sofia, places in the hands of the Servians,
whose power in war he respected and feared more than that of their
allied race, the Bulgars.
The menace caused by the Ottoman conquests was now being appreciated in
Western Europe, where, through the preaching of a crusade by Urban V, a
league was formed between Louis of Anjou, King of Hungary, and several
of the most powerful princes of the Balkan peninsula, both Roumanian
and Slav, for the purpose of driving out the Turks from their newly
acquired European possessions. With an army of 60,000 men the Christian
leaders reached the river Maritza, two days’ journey from Adrianople.
Murad was in Asia, besieging a Greek city on the Propontis, but he
was not needed, since a small detachment of the army of his general,
Lala-Schahin, came in contact with the Christians near Kermianon, and
put them to flight in a panic, in which the two Servian leaders lost
their lives. (1371.)
This victory is set down in the Servian records as a great national
disaster, and deservedly so. It ended their resistance, and it handed
over to the Turks the rest of Thrace, Bulgaria, and a part of Servia.
Significant of the impression made by the conquest was the action of
the people of Ragusa, who signed a treaty of peace, inspired by a
desire to gain commercial advantages from the new Turkish conquests.
They agreed to pay an annual tribute of 500 golden ducats, and thus
they inaugurated a policy imitated by many of their stronger neighbors,
who preferred to make a good bargain with the Ottomans rather than try
the fortunes of war under the auspices of rival Christian states, whose
political aggrandizement, in case a victory were won over the infidel,
was dreaded even more than the expansion of an alien race.
Yet the theory of a united Christendom was maintained despite its
pitiable outcome in the Balkans. Elsewhere there were brilliant feats
of arms, but they were isolated, and being directed by no consistent
plan, proved of no lasting advantage. Peter of Cyprus, a representative
of the Latin dynasty which had held the island since the days of the
earlier Crusades, regarded himself as the guardian of Christian hopes
in the Orient because of his titular dignity of King of Jerusalem. He
took Alexandria in 1365, and helped by Rhodes, Genoa, and contingents
sent by the Pope, he later took Satalieh (Attalia), a place situated in
one of the Seldjouk emirates. Some advantages were gained, too, on the
coast of Syria.
There was little chance of permanent success so long as the princes
and states of the West with their divergent interests, dynastic or
commercial, confronted such a solidly compacted power as that raised
up by Osman. The Turks had a single aim, simple and direct, and they
kept hammering away at their enemies, putting in telling blows at the
right moment and the right place. On the other hand, the Christian
cause suffered both from the leadership of the Papacy, with its rigid
insistence on establishing Western ecclesiastical rule in the East, and
from the sordid self-seeking of the Genoese and Venetians. From both
points of view the conquest of the Greek Empire was generally regarded
as a necessary preliminary for making headway in the restoration of
Christian control over the Holy Land.
The hard case of the Eastern Emperor, whose few remaining possessions
were in the fast-closing grip of the Ottoman Sultan, is sketched
indelibly in the narrative of the Western journey of John V, who, while
the Turks were absorbing the Slavic lands about his empire, visited
Rome to ask the Pope’s aid. In the desperate state of his resources he
had borrowed at Venice, at exorbitant rates of interest, money to pay
the expenses of his trip. On his return empty-handed he was stayed at
Venice by his creditors, and the republic put him in prison. His son,
Andronicus, associated with his father in the Empire, had been left
behind at Constantinople. When the Emperor appealed to him for aid,
the reply came that the treasury was empty. The unfortunate sovereign
appealed with more success to a younger son, Manuel, who mortgaged his
estates and enabled his father to return home.